As a nation state, Italy has emerged only in 1871. Until then the country was politically divided into a large number of independant cities, provinces and islands. The currently available evidences point out to a dominant Etruscan, Greek and Roman cultural influence on today's Italians.

Ciao Cavecreekmommy,
Schiafatone (this is how my mother spelled the name) was my nonno's favorite (He was Calabrian)! I fell in love with it as a child and still prepare it today. The rigatoni are generally a bit larger and the schiafa part, as I understand, implies the swelling of the pasta from the stuffing of ricotta and sometimes sausage. Eventually we just started to refer to any rigatoni prepared meal as "schiafatone".

You can keep uttering the name Schiafatone as much as you wish and while doing so I will be cafunging the schiafatone with zest!! (Cafunging is a word which I invented many years ago since the verb CAFARNAO is used in the idiomatic expression "VO A METTERE IN CAFARNAO"=I am going to supper.

Since I reside in NY it is quite acceptable to speak "La Terza lingua". =Peter=

Not much more than adding to the fund of knowledge about Italian americans and the adaption and creation of words commonly referred to by Italian High School teachers in NY as" La Terza lingua" ( or used to when teaching a foreign language was a serious endeavor). =Peter=

PeterTimber wrote:You can keep uttering the name Schiafatone as much as you wish and while doing so I will be cafunging the schiafatone with zest!! (Cafunging is a word which I invented many years ago since the verb CAFARNAO is used in the idiomatic expression "VO A METTERE IN CAFARNAO"=I am going to supper.

Since I reside in NY it is quite acceptable to speak "La Terza lingua". =Peter=

Peter, where did you get the idiomatic expression "Vo a mettere in Cafarnao"? I've never heard it before. Is Cafarnao a verb??????

My dictionary has it as an idiomatic expression which I stumbled across in High school 1000 years ago and never forgot. My current dictionary has the word as well CAFARNAO(m) Andato in _____ , eaten. Vo a mettere in_____, I am going to supper. Thats it.

I personally never heard the word CAFARNAO used neither here nor in the many times I went to school or visited Italy. It is probably one of those obscure words inItalian that is not much used and we have the same sort of thing in english as well. =Peter=

Could the word be cafarÃ¹ne? I understand this word in Calabrese dialect means gully or ravine (burrone in Italian). "Mettere in cafarÃ¹ne" could make idiomatic sense, or am I really stretching it here?

How interersting Livio but I assure you when I stumbled upon it in High School I really didn't inquire as to the words roots so now I know from whence it came. I still do enjoy "CAFUNJING" on culinary delights. Thanks much Livio=Peter=